A review by sonofthe
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
4.0
So much is going on here, I'm still not sure exactly what to write.
At the core there's a mystery. We follow Lyda Rose as she tries to find out if the death of her friend is tied to her own past. So we get detective bits and action bits, unknown enemies and their mysterious agents. All that's good and fun.
Then there's all the stuff about gods and mental illness and drugs and neuroscience. I don't think I've ever read a book that has so many main characters dealing with different types of mental illness. It's pretty cool in that respect, though I'm not an expert, so I don't know exactly how authentic it is.
With the gods and religious experience stuff, though, I can imagine it rubbing people the wrong way. There was a little of that for me, but mostly it just gave food for thought. What does it mean that we can map religious experience to parts of the brain? If we could—hypothetically—disprove god this way, would it invalidate the experience? &c. I could keep the questions coming, but they're better for a conversation than a review.
This makes me want to read more of Gregory's work. I've got [b:We Are All Completely Fine|20344877|We Are All Completely Fine|Daryl Gregory|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1407196510s/20344877.jpg|28350172] in my to-read list.
At the core there's a mystery. We follow Lyda Rose as she tries to find out if the death of her friend is tied to her own past. So we get detective bits and action bits, unknown enemies and their mysterious agents. All that's good and fun.
Then there's all the stuff about gods and mental illness and drugs and neuroscience. I don't think I've ever read a book that has so many main characters dealing with different types of mental illness. It's pretty cool in that respect, though I'm not an expert, so I don't know exactly how authentic it is.
With the gods and religious experience stuff, though, I can imagine it rubbing people the wrong way. There was a little of that for me, but mostly it just gave food for thought. What does it mean that we can map religious experience to parts of the brain? If we could—hypothetically—disprove god this way, would it invalidate the experience? &c. I could keep the questions coming, but they're better for a conversation than a review.
This makes me want to read more of Gregory's work. I've got [b:We Are All Completely Fine|20344877|We Are All Completely Fine|Daryl Gregory|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1407196510s/20344877.jpg|28350172] in my to-read list.